


Lightning Strike

by Regndoft



Category: Iron Man (Comic), Marvel 616
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Zombies, back from the dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-04
Updated: 2012-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-01 02:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regndoft/pseuds/Regndoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU ficlet based on the end of Execute Program (Iron Man vol.4 7-12). When the ambulance arrives Tony’s heart hasn’t beaten for 37 minutes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lightning Strike

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "zombie" slot of the AU table at Avengers_tables @ LJ. 
> 
> To my embarrassment, I haven't actually read the issues this ficlet is based on (although not for lack of trying); hopefully I've guessed and kept it vague enough to make it work. Zombie AUs aren't my favourite, so mostly I just wanted to tackle it in a bit more unusual way.

When the ambulance arrives Tony Stark's heart hasn’t beaten for 37 minutes. 

Steve’s chest feels tight, but his head remains painfully clear. 

There had been something _wrong_ with Tony and they hadn’t noticed. Not in time. 

Time always seems to be the problem with the Avengers. They notice, but always too late; Carol and Wanda, just in the last couple of years, and now Tony is being shipped off into an ambulance, blue lights flashing a steady rhythm his heart won’t join.

Steve is aware of hands grabbing him, soothing voices meant to assure him that he has to let go now, it’s over and the ambulance personnel will take it from here, Tony’s as safe as he can be.

38 minutes. As long as Steve had been able to keep pushing, keep trying to kick start Tony’s (healthy, entirely organic) heart there had been the vague hope that he would be able to force him back to life. 

They still didn’t know the extent of Extremis’ healing powers for obvious reasons, as opposed to the technical nature of the virus; there had been hope before he’d had to let go. 

The first thing Tony had done after coming back from Washington was to withdraw into his lab to run tests; later, they’d found out he’d been running the tests on himself, trying to make sure he’d truly survived the process without any permanent side effects.

Before the ambulance can take off, the sirens stop. There’s movement inside and before he knows it Steve has taken five long strides forward and jumped into the vehicle.

Steve had pointed out that extending your senses through technology was a pretty permanent side effect in itself. Tony had grinned and said that anything that didn’t kill him was probably an improvement. 

In the ambulance all the equipment has gone dead. Steve feels his heart skip a beat as Tony’s lifeless body twitches and blue eyes, familiar but foreign combined with bangs dyed blond, flutter open.

“Steve,” he rasps out after a long moment of suspenseful silence. The equipment kicks back to life , the car jerks and the sirens’ blare is painfully loud.

It takes a moment for him to hear and almost as long for the ambulance personnel to react to the fact that the heart monitor has flatlined. 

Tony’s chest heaves as he sits up, an increasing look of panic on his face but he’s _moving_ and that can’t be right, he’s supposed to be-- 

“I can’t breathe,” he says and doesn’t sound breathless at all.

Maybe he’s become jaded after all these years in the superhero business, or maybe he’s already in some state of shock from trying to accept his friend’s death, because the realization doesn’t have the impact it should. 

There’s no stone cold horror trickling down the length of his spine like melting ice or deep sorrow burrowing in his bones as he stutters, trying to say what everyone is thinking:

 _I don’t think you need to anymore_.


End file.
